My Destiny Belongs To The One Who Sets Me Free
by Hartabound
Summary: Marie took the cure for so many reasons, never entirely sure if even one of those reasons was a good one, but she should have learned to listen to that old addage, 'never trust the mad scientist who promises you the keys to the world.'
1. Bitter Endings

**My Destiny Belongs To The One Who Sets Me Free**

_Marie took the cure for so many reasons, never entirely sure if even one of those reasons was a good one. But she should have learnt to trust that old addage 'never trust the mad scientist that promises you the keys to the world.'_**  
**

_' In my hands love lies bleeding...'- Hemorrhage_- Fuel.

Rogue stepped closer to the edge of the icy ridge so she could see, could see it all burn. The forests, the stone buildings, the people, and the places... the world was on fire and she had lit the fuse.

It didn't hurt as much as it should have, as much as it used to. There was a time in the beginning when it had burned, much like the fires in the distance. When the feeling of so much power had threatened to overwhelm her, when the idea that she was no longer cured, no longer herself but merely a thing, a creature modified, designed and released to kill…simply to kill…

She turned back to the man lying in the snow and approached him slowly. The wind whipped up around her and drifts of snow rained down like cold crude confetti. Her hair matted by blood not her own stuck firmly to the sides of her face, the white streaks taking on reddish unholy hue.

She stopped just before she reached him; glancing downwards she had spied something in the snow that triggered a lifetime of memories. Not all dead then she thought, funny, they could enhance the mutant side of her, but could they have realised twinges of humanity still remained? Some semblance of a heart that beat and a love that refused to die.

Crouching down she picked up the playing card, harmless now, the deadly charge from it long gone. The Queen of Hearts, cruel irony, a small smile playing on her lips Rogue turned the card over in her bare hands.

She knelt next to his body, surveying him quietly at first, before taking his cold hand and prying the staff softly from his still curled fingers. She held his hand for a while bringing it up to her lips and gently kissing it, then she placed the card in his palm and laid his hand gently over his chest.

'Remy, mon chère why didn't ya just let me go, given up like the rest of 'em. Ah wouldn't have had to hurt ya…' She bowed her head silently vainly wishing she knew something of a God, some sort of prayer to reverently whisper over his still body. It seemed unfitting that he should just ebb away on cold slabs of ice…., dead, by her hands.

But she was a creature of death, an unholy, unnatural thing, the harbinger of doom, the apocalypse itself. Prayer, forgiveness…reverence was not hers. Life was not hers.

The sudden snapping of a twig behind her brought her out of her reverie. Lifting her head slightly she smiled, a familiar scent attacking her heightened senses, and the old sensations of one more fight worth fighting returned.

Of course, he like Remy did not give up easily, he fought bitterly and his near invincibility might just mean that he would prove the adversary she had long craved for. Could it be that it would end…, that he was bringing her a promised end?

'Hello Logan…' she greeted the familiar swishing of adamantium blades with calmness and her usual Southern lilt. 'It's been a long time and an even longer road…old friend.'

'Marie…' he replied. He watched her carefully, he had let her defeat him once before, that fight had almost cost him her life, but not this time. He looked past her shoulder and down to the fallen Remy.

She seemed to read his thoughts perfectly, 'Ah didn't want to, but we both know sometimes the animal in us won't be denied. Ah did ask him to go. Fool, fool of a boy to think he could defeat so many of us.' She shook her head, 'Trying to reach his Marie…even after ah'd told him she was long gone.'

'Is she gone…?' Logan asked, even though somehow always knowing the answer that would be returned.

Rogue tapped the side of her head, 'First casualty ah'm afraid…' She rose slowly to her feet and turned to him slowly.

She turned to look at the vast emptiness around her, and then looked towards him again, 'Familiar ground Logan, do ya recognise it?'

Of course he did, the old labs were here, buried somewhere underneath these mountains of snow. Those labs where they had taken so much from both of them, the epicentre of both their nightmares, the place where they had ripped open his skin and poured that white hot metal into him. Just like her he had burned here.

And here was the place where they had turned her into this, with their experiments, their promised cure, with their lies, all damned lies. Here was where she had died and it had been born.

She smiled at him once more, but Logan thought he could see a solitary tear starting at the corner of her eye. It gathered pace and rolled down her cheek. Logan suddenly realised Marie was not all gone, somewhere behind those eyes lay the sweet girl he had once dismissed so casually, an accursed mistake that had led to all this.

And he wished to heaven he had not seen it, not seen that faint trace of that sweet girl of so many years ago. It would make this so much harder.

'Marie…' he whispered, 'You know why I'm here, what I have to do…'

She nodded her head firmly, Rogue had returned and Marie was banished. She was after all a killing machine, and just like him she wasn't going to go easy.

'Ah know..., just like ah know ah have to kill ya for trying…'

The wind whipped around them once more, but both held their ground firmly, ready for the bitter fight to the death.

* * *

_A/N : Recently watched X-Men 3, wasn't all that impressed, only 10 minutes of Rogue? That's just wrong. So here's my take on things, hoping to do justice to the fantastic mutant that is Rogue. This is the end of course, next chapter...the beginning. Not conventional I know, but hey, who ever wants to be normal?  
_


	2. Even Worse Beginnings

_Disclaimer: This goes for this part, any part I have written or will write, I don't own the X-Men…but if I did I'd make sure as hell I had a restraining order against Brett Ratner._

**Part 2-'even worse beginnings…'**

It should have been so simple, she would take the cure, she'd be able to touch and everything would come up roses. But she should have known, all roses have their thorns. Great big ugly thorns that tore deep, leaving bitter ugly scars that bled like there was no tomorrow.

Rogue's heart had skipped a beat when they announced that there was a cure, when they'd said there was a way to mend what was broken. She could be fixed, she could be 'cured.'

And it hurt being shot down by Storm, being told there was no cure because there was nothing wrong with any of them. But what did she know; she had the luxury of feeling skin on skin, the sense and warmth one got simply from being in close proximity with another body without being afraid. Unless she took this chance she would never have that. And she wanted it, so badly, so much that it was a physical ache.

She shivered waiting in line, waiting to change, waiting to be fixed vainly trying to push back the various nagging voices in the back of her mind. She'd deliberately taken the bus to the clinic on the other side of town, knowing that when Bobby found out what she was doing he'd try to stop her.

And she wasn't doing this for Bobby, at least not just for him. It was for so many reasons; she would never allow herself to be considered to be so weak as to do this for a guy. No, there were so many other factors here, so many other things. Small things that nobody else ever had to think twice about. They all took fit for granted, the sense of touch, the world took it for granted, she'd long noticed that, ever since her mutancy had kicked into force.

One only ever really considers what an innate, what an intrinsic wonderful sense of being it is to be allowed to touch when it is taken away. What a truly wonderful thing the human sense of interaction, the sensation of simply laying a hand on another is, for to touch she found, is to live.

And Rogue wanted to live, for so long she had felt as if she was drowning, her body and her very soul seemed to be ebbing away succumbing to the darkness and the numb emptiness that is a life devoid of touch.

Being at The Academy had not helped, she could not be buried in obscurity here, differences were celebrated, mutancy was practiced without fear. But Rogue resented the fact that _they_ could brush past each other in the hallway, that _they_ could hold bare hands under the table, and pass plates over it with no fear. They didn't even think about, and she would watch with a growing ache and a fast beating heart as they went about it, skin on skin, wholly without consideration. Laughing, not fearing, even as she sat opposite them, with her long black gloves, being careful, always so careful.

More often than not she simply left them to it, got up and walked away, feeling cynical and tired, and so jaded. She would always be the lonely one, the one who couldn't touch, who couldn't live. So she forewent lunch in the canteen, preferring to skip a few meals if necessary. She didn't mind that her weight was dropping drastically, and the dark rings were getting more noticeable around her eyes.

But others noticed for her, someone did mind. He never said much, but he saw it all, and he felt for the kid. Logan had been used to keeping a careful eye on her, but lately it had seemed she was resenting even that. And so he had tried to leave her to it, tried to give her the independence she craved, to not think of her as a kid.

And as a result they had drifted apart, he shutting himself down after Jean's death at Alkali Lake, and she concentrating and being in turns frustrated by her relationship with Bobby.

But Jean it appeared was back, albeit batting for the other side and there was the cure. That cure, the elixir to end all evils, to end her suffering. She knew they wouldn't understand, she knew better than ask for their blessing, they wouldn't, they couldn't understand and so as usual she went alone.

She strode with a purpose down that hall, her long hair bouncing around her shoulders, the white streaks in them doing their own merry dance. She was going to sneak out, get it over and done with before anyone could think to ask her to explain herself. But he found her; she smiled faintly at the sound of his voice asking her if she needed a lift. He found her, somehow he always did.

Their conversation was mercifully short; he knew what it was to suffer, to keep memories locked in your head, to be fearful, always fearful. He had suffered, for years he had suffered as she had, struggling with his own nightmares of a past that came as an assault on the senses. That came in the dead of night, where he feared being violated in such a manner again, being stripped of an identity and being moulded, shaped into something unnatural.

She feared the same; her mutancy made her a thing unnatural, and made her afraid she'd never be touched. So he had let her go with precious little fight, and she had been thankful for his almost casual dismissal. Finally, maybe she could go back.

Back to being what she had been before, back to the name and the girl she had insisted Logan call her even as he walked away. Marie.

* * *

He watched her through the one way mirror, smiled as his brave girl did her best but ultimately failed to appear unafraid of the needle approaching her arm. 

He watched and flinched along with her, his own flesh seeming to pucker in intensity and sympathy as the thin metal first touched and then broke through her skin.

He had long watched her, even before her powers had manifested, true he had been young then, but he knew, even then he knew that she had potential. And so he had kept a careful eye on her, when she had run away from her parent's house and ended up in Laughlin city. And had long been aware of the growing jealousy that grew into a pointed, forceful ache when she had seemed to have found a home with the X-Men and Xavier's academy, but he knew it wouldn't last. His Rogue was never destined to be caught up within their restrictions, their rules and their insistence on doing the right thing.

He had known it would not last, so he had waited patiently, waited and watched, always watching. And as the winds changed, he had smiled wider when he had seen her in the line. The cure would lure her as he had known it would.

No, she was meant for far greater things, a far greater destiny. His Rogue had potential all right and he was going to make damn sure she would reach it, whether she knew it or not.

He made his silent vow even as he watched the needle being driven home, and watched her flinch against the straps of the gurney. He had watched and he had waited, and he was going to wait just a little longer…


	3. Ah'm gonna be just fine'

**Part 3- 'Ah'm gonna be just fine…'**

Did you really think it wouldn't change? That they wouldn't see you differently, treat you differently. She could hear their words, even in their silent stares, their accusing looks…. _traitor._

Traitor to cause she had never had embraced, and a choice she had never made. Barely a week since she had taken the cure and their silent disdain was slowly killing her. Not being able to touch she found was no less a greater cross to bear than no one wanting to touch you.

The excitement on her return from the clinic had soon died down; Jean was dead, along with the Professor and Scott, all gone. Those who were left looked lost and a lot like the long dead. There was too much pain and heartache in the mansion for anyone to be left unaffected. New mutants came pouring into the academy, outcasts, lost and afraid needing a place to feel safe, to feel wanted.

The late Professor's academy had become the unofficial place for mutants who needed somewhere to be who they wanted without fear. He would have been proud; the professor, to know that so many trusted and relied on the institution he had spent a lifetime building.

But Marie was no longer one of those needing a sanctuary, she was cured. She didn't belong here, she wasn't welcome here. They didn't have to say it, no one had ever said it, but she felt it. Walking down the hallways able to brush past them now, but they shrank away from her touch, deliberately keeping a distance. Never mind cured, she felt accursed all over again. Those who could not meet her gaze kept their eyes glued firmly to the floor, the ceiling, and that curiously interesting point above her head.

But not at her, never at her. Time to leave…time to go.

She had not done it for Bobby, but his reaction had hurt the most. She'd waited patiently in her room knowing he'd come and see her once he knew she was back. Sure enough he opened the door slowly and paused in the door watching her, just watching.

'I never wanted this…' He approached her tentatively, still standing a few feet away from her.

'No, but ah did.' She spoke softly up at him. She reached out and laid a hand on his arm, skin on skin, for the first time. No more gloves, no more barriers. He gasped at first still a little unsure.

'It's alright…'she whispered. She revelled in the touch, finally being able to touch, nothing could ever compare to this. But she wanted more, needed more. She'd finally gotten a taste, but those delicate soft strokes of her fingers on his bare arm were nothing more than a gentle stream. It was an agonisingly slow trickle, and what she craved was a flood.

She pressed herself closer to him, snaked an arm about his neck and leaned in for a kiss. Their first kiss without fear, without dread, she was sure it would taste like heaven.

And for a few moments it was, heaven and every other ecstasy that could ever be afforded. She brushed her lips across his feverishly, tasting, feeling wanting and needing so much more. He pulled her closer and replied with an equal ardency. She brought up her other hand to smooth across his chest, loving the feel of his taut muscles under her hand.

But there was the question of his shirt, frustrating cloth that got in the way of what she wanted, which was to touch and taste every part of him. She reached for his waistband and pulled the shirt up and out. She pushed her hands underneath, keeping her mouth locked onto his all the while.

So this is what flesh was, all hot and taut, muscle and gloriously sensitive skin! She spread both her hands across his stomach and over his chest. Bobby caught his breath at the feel of her small, curious and exploring hands. She smiled widely and broke the kiss at last leaving them both gasping for breath.

He stared intently at her, face flushed and eyes darkened with desire. He watched mouth agape as she slowly, teasingly snaked her hands lower until they were both resting just above his belt. Her deft fingers with their new found freedom made light work of his heavy belt buckle.

She began kissing him again, her mouth hot and wet against his was unbelievable, but it was not until she had successfully removed his belt, opened the fastenings and began working on the fly of his jeans that it finally dawned on him just how far she was willing to go.

And he couldn't do it, for some reason it just didn't feel right so he roughly pulled away from her, though it killed him to see her face fall in disappointment and confusion.

'What…what's wrong…?' she demanded of him. He didn't answer at first hurriedly tucking in his shirt, she took a step towards him and almost instinctively before he could stop himself, he stepped backwards.

'I'm sorry Rog-…Marie…' That's right she thought, no longer Rogue, all Marie now, touchable, lovable. So why aren't you touching me or loving me?

'It's just this isn't…, I can't do this. There's…' And he couldn't finish his sentence but she knew what he wanted to say. She hadn't really done this for him, but finally being able to touch him for real would have been one hell of a bonus.

He couldn't finish the sentence but she could, 'There's Kitty, right?' She smiled sadly, he did genuinely seem devastated.

'I'm sorry Marie, God knows I tried to stop it from happening but, and then you went and did this as well, God I'm such a bastard…'

She looked up at him suddenly, her eyes flashing in deep anger, 'you're right… you are a bastard, an arrogant, self-centred, selfish bastard. Did you really think I did this for _you? _Get over yourself!'

She approached him slowly then, walking forwards forcing him to retreat backwards out of the room. 'You have no idea what it's like being forced to stand on the sidelines, forced to watch the world pass ya by, and all it would really take is to just reach out. Just grab it, so many have that, why couldn't ah?' Her Southern accent was getting more prominent the angrier she got.

'Ah wanted that, and ah took it, for myself, just for _me_…not ya, nobody else…just me. So don't feel sorry for me. 'Cos ah made my choice, and ya can be damn sure ah'd make the same one again.' She was physically pushing him out of the door now.

'Marie…' he protested wanting to explain himself that much better. But she was tired of excuses; she had a whole life to live, a whole life full of touch. If he didn't want to be a part of that, then so be it. Bobby Drake was not something to be so lamented now that Marie was back.

* * *

It was only much later that the tears began to fall, soft gentle tears of longing. Just wishing to be understood, wanting them all to understand that she would have given up forever just to be allowed to touch, and in the end all she had to sacrifice was a mutation that had just about destroyed her. All she wanted was to shout at them to understand, to know that it's no sort of life when you have to physically break and bleed yourself, just to convince yourself you are truly alive. 

But she was tired, of this place, this mansion of mutants who judged her when they had no right to, when they did not know. So she made her choice, standing up with as firm a resolution as she had ever known, she grabbed her duffel bag from underneath her bed and began to pack.

She made light work of it all, it seemed a testament to her life at the academy that it took precious little time for it to be done. She deliberately discarded the long sleeve shirts, the scarves and perhaps, most symbolically the gloves. She tossed them on her bed, looking back at them only once as she made her way to the door.

It opened before she reached it, and there stood the one man who had not sought to judge, but for his own reasons had avoided her all the same. Logan.

He seemed as tired and broken as she did. Marie had heard something of the sacrifice he had made at Alcatraz, and she prayed she would never know such sorrow. To kill the one thing anyone had ever loved was to proclaim a death sentence on oneself. And Logan did look as if he was suffering under such a death sentence.

'What do you think you're doin' kid?' He nodded towards the bag she had slung over her back.

'What people like us do best Logan…running away.' She looked him squarely in the eye, recollecting the way they had met, two runaways as distrusting of the world as they were of each other. But that had changed; now there was no one in the world the other would trust more with their very lives.

'Ah'm surprised you've stuck around this long…' the sentiment was genuine, she had expected Logan to take off as soon as he had come back from the mission, but he was still here, in some sense at least.

'Kid…there's no need for you to go.' He sat on the edge of her bed, so tired.

She stood by the door, knowing if she stepped back into the room now she'd never leave.

'Hey Logan, do you know what it is to grow up too fast?'

He winced and she immediately felt the stupidity of her question. He was something past 80 and even that was a guess, of course he didn't know what it was to grow up too fast, for him time moved ever torturously slow.

She sighed, 'Ah'm sorry Logan. But ah know what it is, ah grew up too fast, ah missed out on so much, things everybody else takes for granted. All because of some mutation…,' she held up her hand, 'because of my skin. Now ah have the chance to go back, to make up for some of it. A chance to live all the dreams ah thought ah'd lost, and whatever they think of me, ah'm not going to apologise for taking that chance.'

Marie tightened the hold on her bag, 'And ah'm sure as hell not gonna stay where everyone thinks ah have something to apologise for.'

'Someone say something kid?' He flexed his hands and she could tell he was angry on her behalf.

She laughed quietly, 'They don't have to say it Logan, ah can see it. It's in the way they look at me…or in your case…don't.' He looked up sharply at those words, he was sure he had done nothing different. But she saw, she always saw.

Marie forgave him in an instant as she always knew she would. Stepping back into the room she kissed him briefly on the cheek. 'It's okay Logan,' she whispered against his ear, 'ah'll be fine…and give it time sugah, you will be too.'

She was at the door when he called out again, 'Marie, you got somewhere to go…?' She turned back and offered him the most brilliant smile.

'Ah sure do…ah'm goin' home Logan.'

* * *

He sat stock still, both feet planted firmly on the floor, knees locked tightly together and his hands clutching the folders in his lap. 

He sat in the middle of a bare whitewashed room facing a panel of his superiors. The trio, one woman and two men wore the same suit as he did, black shirt, black tie, all black.

They opened the folders in front of them, the same folder he had in his lap. Papers he knew the contents of inside out. The first item was a picture of Marie.

The woman who sat in the centre was the only one to speak. 'Can we assume the inoculation of…' she glanced at the papers once more, 'of project R-34673 was a success?'  
She offered him the briefest glance over her horn-rimmed glasses before settling back to read the sheets in front of her.

He replied with an unwavering conviction, 'Completely…'

'And she is of course unaware of the fact that the 'cure' is in essentials ineffective?' The horn-rimmed woman kept her gaze glued firmly to the picture.

'As far as Marie is concerned she is completely cured, the effects of the antidote however will last only a few months, and then…' He paused as if reflecting on something. The slightest twinge of a smile was caught at the corner of his mouth.

The trio looked at each other and back at him with some incredulity, 'And then…?'

His blank expression returned and covered his face once more. 'Then she'll be back.'

'You say that with a certain degree of certainty, can you be so absolutely sure?'

He nodded firmly, 'Absolutely sure. You see she needs it; she needs to be accepted, to fit in. What Marie has always been looking for is a family, once she finds it there is nothing on this earth she will not do to hold onto it. Including coming back for repeat doses of the 'cure' if necessary...'

Oh yes, he was sure. He had watched her long enough to know what it was his Marie needed…what she wanted. And in time she would find he was the only family she could ever need.

And in return he was willing to give her the world.


	4. Someone To Watch Over Me

_A/N: Sorry it takes me so long to update, I do mean to dedicate myself more but time and circumstance... Anyway back to the story. The mystery man I introduced to you in the last two parts is finally explained here. Full marks to** irisheyesrsmiling** for making the connection to Sinister, he is mentioned here as well, under an alias of course. And yes Marie's stalker is very much in love with her, obssessively so, which is always dangerous._**  
**

**Part 4- 'Someone to watch over me…'**

Blake Richards had been something of a child prodigy, with an IQ to put most adults to shame; he had spent most of his young school life skipping grades. Always being pushed to the next level, always challenged, always tested.

The only son and heir of multi-millionaire Maxwell Richards, Blake found there were few doors left unopened to a handsome young man set to inherit a monetary kingdom. And what privileges fortune could not afford him he earned, through his dedication to science.

His fascination with the mutant race had always been a factor in his young life, ever since the age of 10 from where his father had consented to him being an audience member in the public auditorium where the debate over mutants was raging. And he had of course read all the literature, the serious studies into how the mutant gene had evolved the severe papers on what such super advanced specimens of being would mean to the average, normal human population. He had absorbed all these as well as the trivial, the comic strips, the graphic novels, more often than not wildly distorted versions of the truth in animation, simply to know more.

And that obsession had naturally led to his keen interest in genetics, and more specifically its manipulation. The extraordinary development of the mutant race and its core grew into an addiction for him; the thirst for more knowledge, the dedication became an insatiable desire.

And that was when he was approached by a man whom he would soon find himself working closely with, Dr Nathan Milbury. Blake found the doctor to be something of a mystery, the way the older man had found him was incredible enough, the story he had to tell him was more so.

He was a professional looking man, with raven black hair, aged in his late forty's, he was remarkably pale, his skin seemed to glow with a luminosity that shifted every time it caught the waning moonlight. Milbury waiting outside the lecture hall in which Blake had been teaching, had stepped out of the shadows and made him an incredible offer.

The chance to study mutants personally, alongside Milbury himself, and to do so without restraint, without constriction and without question. Here was a chance for Blake to feed his addiction, to go on that quest for knowledge unabated.

All Milbury asked was that they study mutants of his choosing, that Blake would do as he was instructed without question and to be patient, to never question his methods, as well as his to impart his implicit trust.

For a fleeting moment Blake had doubted, the conditions required seemed to be asking to sell his soul to the devil, but the doubts were all fleeting and he was soon shaking Milbury's hand and nodding his agreement.

Only then did Milbury state his final condition, Blake Richards had to die. That is the persona; the scientific child prodigy the world had come to know had to be removed. The work they were to conduct was so sensitive, so secretive that Milbury could not afford to take on an understudy with hitherto such an infamous life.

And so Blake consented to even that, within a few days it was being announced worldwide that young Blake Richards had been killed in a freak yachting accident off the Ivory Coast.

Friends and family mourned and inevitably moved on, as did Blake.

* * *

He had been only 20 when Dr Nathan Milbury had offered him what had seemed the opportunity of a lifetime, although initially it had all seemed remarkably surreal. When Milbury had stated that the work was secretive, Blake discovered he had sorely underestimated just how secretive the Doctor's world was. 

The lab in which he was assigned was concealed deep underground, one of many scattered across the world, expertly and clinically equipped, it was a vast labyrinth of networks, channels, lab rooms and research sections set out meticulously. And Blake discovered he was by no means alone, the place was as busy as any normal hospital, overrun by men and women in white coats, with the addition now and again of people in black suits.

It was to a panel of black suits that Dr Milbury had introduced Blake; they of course knew who he was and welcomed him accordingly. The area he stood in they stated was a highly classified underground facility, unknown to the outside world, a deep black ops of whose existence was officially and strenuously denied by any and every government.

The genetic experimentation of mutant genomes or GEM as it was 'unofficially' known was specifically created for the study and classification of the mutant gene. In pursuit of the ability to enhance it, manipulate it and ultimately control it.

That was the world Blake had allowed himself to be ingratiated in, and he was not sorry for it. He advanced and excelled, as he did at everything else, remarkably quickly and soon became known as the Dr Milbury's right hand man.

And the methods which Milbury had been so insistent Blake should not question, was something Milbury need not have worried about. Blake Richards although blessed with superior intellect was also it was soon discovered woefully lacking in human compassion, in his pursuit for perfection, which he thought through evolution mutants had finally reached, there were no methods Blake was willing to object to.

Yes, it was shock at first seeing various mutants in embryonic forms, fully grown and even as children being extensively studied, probed and yes sometimes even tortured in the name of science, but he saw it all as necessity, a means to an end. The perfect end.

So he allowed himself to become acclimatised to the screams of pain in the holding cells, the howls of despair in the experimenting labs, until eventually he could walk by and it was as if he wasn't hearing them at all.

* * *

It was during his second year as Milbury's understudy that Blake was offered his first and, for what soon through personal choice became his only field assignment. Marie. 

He knew the subject was important when Milbury had called him into his private office, shut the door and produced a thick file. He gestured for Blake to take it away with him and read it, 'Come back when you've made your choice…'

Blake had looked back at him questioningly at the door, but Milbury had returned to studying a sample and gestured him away. Blake was back in a matter of hours, 'I'll do it…' was all he had to say, Milbury looked up at him with a knowing smile.

So it was that a relatively young Blake Richards began his observation of the young Marie D'Ancanto. She had been only 15 when he started sitting in his unmarked SUV to watch her. And at first he had convinced himself that the affection he slowly began to feel for the girl was of the brotherly sort, and at times he had tried to resist even that, wishing to ascertain his professionalism and prove that the way he watched Marie was with the indifference of a scientist watching his subject. 

But he could not fault the feelings that gradually began to stir in him, every time he caught a glimpse of her in the window. He could not mistake the way his heart skipped a beat every time she walked passed his car on her way to school, unknowingly being within inches of his grasp. And he was outside her house, in different cars, but always there more than three times a week and more than was necessary.

At times he wondered if Milbury had somehow known of the effect the girl would have on him, and had sent him on this assignment deliberately as a test, but then he rationalised that he couldn't have possibly have foretold such a thing, and besides Milbury had offered him the choice. No doubt the older man would have been sickened as he had oft been towards himself, that he, Blake a man of 22, was in love with a girl of only 15.

But Milbury knew, of course he did, never mind what compassion Blake lacked, every beast is capable of affection and yes, even love. What Blake had misunderstood about the good Doctor was how quickly he was able to see how easily young hearts can be manipulated. Even hearts as guarded and as guided by science as Blake's.

* * *

It was after nearly a year of watching, of patiently waiting that her powers eventually began to manifest themselves. He had known something was happening when Marie's piercing scream cut through the cool Mississippi evening air. His grip had tightened on the steering wheel and he had gazed with increasing intensity at Marie's window from where the sound had emanated. 

Within fifteen minutes he saw a steady stream of red and blue lights heading up the road and to the house as a number of police cars and ambulance converged on the place. People began stepping out of their houses to see what all the noise about, and when Blake saw a body strapped to a gurney and being stretched to the waiting ambulance, he knew. Marie had hurt someone.  
He looked up instinctively at her bedroom window and the shadow that was cast there; he could feel her fear and guilt from where he sat.

It was early in the same hours that morning that Marie would quietly slip out of the door and head for the open highway. And it was the same morning Blake had decided to follow her, beyond the city limits, north and into the hubbub of New York. Ready to begin his vigil wherever she ended up, whichever place she chose to call home.

Even when that proved to be Xavier's Academy, of course there he could not spend as long sat outside in his car for fear of detection. So he cut back on the hours and sat in the lab and waited.

The idea of creating a cure had been the manifestation of both Blake's and Dr Milbury's brilliant minds. It was always going to be temporary, but the incentive would be there, to lure Marie out and to keep her within their grasp.

Having spent so long watching her, Blake felt he knew Marie as well as he knew himself, he had known she would take the cure, had known that she would feel outcast in the home she had made for herself with the rest of the mutants. And he had even known that she would come back, to this place.

Back to this part of the Deep South that had once been her home, the place with the white picket fence and the name D'Ancanto on the mailbox. So he had parked in that same place from where he had watched almost four years ago, and for him it was a little like coming home as well.

And just as he had known that Marie would come back he knew it was wrong. But he could not interfere, this was her time now, to find that family she so craved and to do whatever it took to hold onto them.

But the D'Ancanto were not the family Marie needed, and even as he watched her approach the house tentatively, he knew that Marie was not going to find what she wanted, certainly not here.


	5. Fool

**Part 5- 'Fool…'**

Fool, such a fool to think that the world would stop turning just for her. To think that everything would stand still and wait while she found herself again, that hope would allow everything to be as it once was four years ago, that nothing had really changed and her parents would be waiting on the other side of the door arms wide open ready to welcome her back.

It was with this blind hope that Marie stood in front of the house. She took a deep breath and knocked, strange, of all the things she could have left behind when she had left all those years ago it would be her only set of keys. She had been so afraid, climbing down the stairs in the middle of the night her parents had not been asleep, and she could hear her mother crying still in the den. Every quiet sob that racked the woman's body had torn at Marie's heart and in the end as she had sneaked through the kitchen, placed the keys on the cabinet and walked out the back door she was blinded by tears herself.

She waited what seemed to her an age for an answer, and as she stood on the porch shifting nervously from one foot to the other, her fingers automatically went to the chain around her neck and clasped at the dog tags she still wore. It was a habit she had developed, any time she had felt nervous or even remotely afraid she would take to holding the tags between her fingers and dwelling on the man who had given them to her. And it was Logan's strength that calmed her, his resolute invincibility that staid her.

She sighed deeply and knocked again. She frowned in thought, until she realised that it was likely her parents weren't going to be home, certainly not at two o'clock in the afternoon. Her father would no doubt be at the motorcade where he worked and her mother at the homeless shelter where she volunteered on Wednesday afternoons.

The thought made her smile, the sheer normality of it all, this was sprawling suburbia, Caldecott Mississippi, this was home, this was right. Still she could not stand on the steps all day without drawing attention, so picking up her bag again she made for the back of the house. Reaching out she brushed her hands along the clots of lavender planted along the side of the house and closed her eyes gladly inhaling the heavenly scent.

She dropped her bag at her feet and just stood outside the back door, a normal door in every sense in the word, but today after four years it was extra special. She stood on tiptoe and reaching up ran her fingers along the outside frame. Eventually she came to a stop as her fingers clasped something at the top ; she brought it down and looked at it closely. It was a key, _the _key.

Time to come home.

* * *

'Ah'm sorry Marie, but ah don't quite know how to say…' His quiet voice, the one she had allowed to resonate in her head throughout her journey here shook. The strong familiar voice she had missed in oh so long was breaking. She stared at him across the kitchen table, her hands wringing nervously and her eyes glazed over, blank. 

They had not always been her parents, she knew that. They had sat her down one day when she had been about seven years old to tell her that she had not always been there's.

She had broached the subject with them after a child at school had cruelly told her that at least her parents were real, to which Marie had retorted that her parents were no telegrams either. Meaning of course hologram but getting the words mixed up in her confused childhood English.

What the girl had meant stuck with her though and Marie had sat patiently as the man and woman she had long come to think of as her heroes had told her that she had not always been a D'Ancanto. It was not a painful revelation; she had been only five months old and newly abandoned at the children's home when they had adopted her. Then and even years later Marie had borne no inclination to seek out her birth parents, as far as she was concerned she was a D'Ancanto and she always would be.

But if anything could change things it was developing a mutation, a mutation as cruel as hers. As Marie had turned the key in the lock with a halted breath and as she waited in the open doorway to catch familiar sights and familiar smells of the D'Ancanto family kitchen, she was to realise how far things had changed.

She swept her gaze across the room, over every kitchen cabinet, every drawer, they were all empty. Instead the floor area was covered in boxes that were packed or waiting to be packed, and in the same heartbeat Marie knew what it meant, they were leaving.

She made her way tentatively through the now empty and coldly clinical kitchen and towards the living room, it was in similar state, boxes packed and ready to go. She didn't have to go through every room she knew, but through some morbid need to suffer as much as possible she had made her way to what had once been her bedroom. It was the barest of them all, nothing remained, nothing of what she had been, nothing of the daughter they had once had.

Fool, such a fool to think the world stands still. She had ran out of the house then, blindly down the stairs, through the living room and the empty kitchen and out of the door, a sickening feeling overwhelming everyone of her senses, she had only stopped at the gate, the cute little white picket fence that she leaned on for everything she was worth.

It was only then that she had noted the envelope jutting out of the mailbox. Looking back she could not understand even then why she had taken the letter, but she had and as she walked slowly back to the house she had torn it open with trembling fingers. The were adoption papers, documents to prepare for the child they would receive once they had moved to their new home.

A new child, a new home and in another state, and not a word for Marie. As she slumped numbly into the seat at the kitchen table, the papers fell from her hands and scattered across the smooth mahogany surface. She leaned forward, buried her face in her hands and for only the second time in her life cried herself to sleep.

They found her hours later, her brown and now white streaked hair billowing around her hair, quietly asleep, with those papers surrounding her.

She looked up at Owen D'Ancanto now, the man she had so long thought of as the best of fathers with bitter accusation in her eyes. 'Were ya goin' to tell me?' she whispered, feeling tired, all the life drained out of her.

'Ya knew where ah was, ah contacted ya, told ya ah was at the Academy, ya should have told me.' She had phoned them, on Xavier's insistence; he had cited it was unfair to let them worry. She had kept the phone call deliberately short because as she had told them then, she didn't want to be the cause of any more pain. And in the four years they had been apart, there had been no letters; no more calls and not even a postcard. They had both agreed on that.

But she had always thought it was a given that parents waited, even adoptive ones for their children to come home. Even if they were mutants, cured or otherwise, mum and dad waited, right?

'Marie, it was ya who decided, no more contact ya said, because it would hurt too much…' he murmured gently. She didn't give him a chance to say anything more.

'Ah know what ah said, but this' she snapped angrily and gestured towards the boxes, 'this, was important. Were ya ever goin' to tell me? How did ya expect me to find out, like this, coming back to see y'all packed up and ready to go?'

It suddenly dawned on Marie that was exactly it. They had never intended on telling her, because they had never expected her to come back.

And the way her adoptive mother, Priscilla D'Ancanto stood at the sink with her back to her, seemingly staring at the same backyard for the past half hour since they had come back to find her here confirmed it all.

She reached for the dog tags as she bit her lip, 'Is it what ya wanted, what ya hoped for, that ya wouldn't have to see me again?'

Owen stayed resolutely silent, staring at the table but his wife spoke, 'Yes…'

Marie looked up at her suddenly, fresh tears stinging her eyes, her one soft spoken word cut through the deepest.

She stood up shakily and took a step towards the older woman, 'But ah'm your daughter…' strangely the words sounded hollow to Marie's ears and even Priscilla was shaking her head.

'No, no you're not my daughter. Ya see my Marie had long brown hair, not these white streaks, and she had this beautiful smile and ah could hug her and hold her…' she raised a hand reaching out to touch Marie's cheek but she dropped it at the last minute.

'You can, ya still can,' Marie called out desperately pressing closer to her mother, but she pulled back instinctively, 'ah took the cure mama, ya must have heard of it. It was all over the news,' she spoke to both her parents now, 'and ah took it, for you, for us so we could go back to the way it used to be.'

Priscilla rounded on her angrily, 'we can't go back, don't ya see we can't go back! That boy ya touched, Cody Robbins, Marie it was four years ago and he's still in a coma. The doctors don't think he'll ever wake up…'

Marie shook her head, the tears flowing freely now, 'But ah'm your daughter, ah need ya, please…' It seemed to be the only words she could find, it was the only truth she had ever known.

'You are NOT my daughter; stop saying that, you're a freak, a mutant, my daughter is-is dead…!' Priscilla turned and ran out of the room, her body convulsing with heart rending sobs.

Owen sighed sadly and went to look closely at the girl he by all means loved still, as long as he held onto that image of the happy carefree 16 year old Marie. Those memories had sustained him those four years, they would have sufficed a lifetime and for the slightest moment he felt resentful towards the young woman who now stood before him, no longer a girl but 20 years old now, and for all the world looking as tired and as jaded as the oldest of souls. Resentful because she had returned, older and pained and tarnishing his perfect little image, an ideal that had allowed him to live with the guilt.

All the guilt he felt and had long felt at how easily they had abandoned her. Yes it had been Marie's choice to leave, but they had not fought for her, they hadn't even put up much of an argument when she'd told them that she would be staying at the Academy.

It was easier for the D'Ancanto's to pretend their daughter had died, through some strange reasoning it hurt less than having to face the fact that she was a mutant.

'Marie,' he began tentatively, 'ya don't know what it was like for us, this town; these people have pretty much shunned us. After…after,' he struggled with the memory, 'that night people blamed us and we've been outcasts ever since, this ain't home anymore Marie, for any of us.'

'But ah'm fixed now…' Marie's eyes seemed to drown in tears, big brown eyes that seemed to scream suffering. Wanting to prove her point she reached up to touch his face, but he pulled back with such haste that he almost fell backwards. They were afraid of her, the cure seemed too elusive, too much of a quick fix to have truly worked, and it seemed they did not love her enough to take the risk.

Her hand dropped and she took a deep breath, 'Ah guess you're right dad, this really ain't home anymore.' Her resignation seemed to hang heavy and depressing in the air. Turning she went and picked up her bag, she hesitated a moment looking at the papers on the table, she picked one up and held it up for him to see, 'Ah hope the next kid is somethin' close to perfect, 'cos ah have a feeling anything less just won't do.' Her words were bitter and resentful and she hoped they hurt him to hear them as much as it hurt her to say.

* * *

Forget what they tell you about home being where the heart is, all the platitudes about it being the place that will never change, and the people there being the ones that will never abandon you, it's a lie.

For Marie it had been a lie, as she made her way down the lengthy driveway looking back only once and catching a glimpse of her mother in the upstairs bedroom window, it had been the bitterest of lies. She had taken the cure but apparently it was not enough. So much for the ideals, there was nothing of an elixir, nothing of the promised drug that could cure her skin but still saw her walking alone under the Southern sun, and realising that perhaps she was broken and bruised in too many places to be fixed.


End file.
